I learned from our contractor we had that Home Depot & Lowes are notorious for things like that....basically if you read the fine print under their INSTALLATION costs, it says you may be responsible for additional charges. For instance, last week we looked into re-titling our bathroom, but they arent allowed to remove our sink and toilet and i have to hire a plumber to remove those before they do the tiling, then i have to re-hire the plumber to come back and put the toilet and sink back on....plumber here is $90/hour, so thats like 4-5 hours of work which is almost $400-$500....if i hired an outside contractor to do the entire job, they would remove those things. Home Depot/Lowes wont cover anything incase they break something....most contractors that are good have insurance, so they will cover it, so i always make sure they have insurance and i request a copy of their insurance plan # which you can look up so i know they are legit...
also in Home Depot & Lowes, if you get new windows installed, the Install Fee only covers if the windows fit perfectly in place. if they have to do a little shifting around and adjustments, they charge a lot more...so i had Portland Glass (big window company in Maine) give us an estimate on windows, and their estimate covers everything under the sun to install the windows...no matter what happens, the cost is the cost...and if they break something, they fix it....
so your better off hiring a contractor outside of Lowes & Home Depot. Which even then, its hard to find someone reliable, but atleast you dont have to worry about extra fees because a good contractor will let you know upfront if they think the can see any issues before install.....
its a stressful thing dealing with it all, but contracting business is usually run by morons....its just so hard to find anyone good....we found good ones because we asked our neighbors and they knew a lot of good reliable ones....a few were bad, but most eventually were good....Plus you live in Mass, my guess contractors charge a lot more in Mass than they do in Maine....
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also in Home Depot & Lowes, if you get new windows installed, the Install Fee only covers if the windows fit perfectly in place. if they have to do a little shifting around and adjustments, they charge a lot more...so i had Portland Glass (big window company in Maine) give us an estimate on windows, and their estimate covers everything under the sun to install the windows...no matter what happens, the cost is the cost...and if they break something, they fix it....
so your better off hiring a contractor outside of Lowes & Home Depot. Which even then, its hard to find someone reliable, but atleast you dont have to worry about extra fees because a good contractor will let you know upfront if they think the can see any issues before install.....
its a stressful thing dealing with it all, but contracting business is usually run by morons....its just so hard to find anyone good....we found good ones because we asked our neighbors and they knew a lot of good reliable ones....a few were bad, but most eventually were good....Plus you live in Mass, my guess contractors charge a lot more in Mass than they do in Maine....
sorry for all your troubles.